April 27 Transcript

Texas Department of Transportation Commission Meeting

COMMISSION MEMBERS:

RIC WILLIAMSON, CHAIRMAN
JOHN W. JOHNSON
HOPE ANDRADE
TED HOUGHTON, JR.


STAFF:

MICHAEL W. BEHRENS, P.E., Executive Director
RICHARD MONROE, General Counsel
ROGER POLSON, Executive Assistant to the Deputy Executive Director

AUDIENCE:  Good morning.

MR. WILLIAMSON:  It's a great morning to be a Texan.  It is 9:20 a.m., and I would like to call the April 2006 meeting of the Texas Transportation Commission to order.

Before we begin today's meeting, we traditionally ask everyone in the audience to join with us in taking a moment to reach into your pocket, purse or sidesaddle, pull out your pager, your cell phone, your PDA, your DewBerry, whatever you carry, and please, if you would, put it on the silent or vibrate mode so that none of our guests will be interrupted unexpectedly.  We'll all do it with you.  Thank you.

I want to tell you it's a great pleasure for the commission to be at the tip of Texas this morning.  Brownsville is a great Texas city, as are all of the communities scattered up and down the Lower Rio Grande Valley.

It's our practice to begin each of our commission meetings by permitting each commissioner to address the audience on a personal basis, so with your indulgence, we will begin to the far right with Mr. Houghton and go to Ms. Andrade and Mr. Johnson, and then I'll close the remarks.  Ted?

MR. HOUGHTON:  Good morning, everyone, and I echo the chairman's remarks on being down at the tip of Texas here.  It's been a lot of fun; I've been down here quite a bit lately.  And I look forward to the actions today, the anticipated actions today to launch this community into a new arena of transportation.

And again, thank you for all the hospitality that you've afforded us.

MS. ANDRADE:  Good morning.  It's just absolutely wonderful to wake up in South Texas this morning.  It's a great morning, it's a great day.  I'm looking forward to the business that we're about to take on and to keep transportation moving forward here in South Texas.

But also what's wonderful is to see so many of our friends from other communities come together to support what we're trying to do.  And I see kids back here, I see our future leaders back here, so I'm so glad that they've been brought here to see how business is done for transportation in the state of Texas.

Thank you all again, it's been a great trip.

MR. JOHNSON:  Good morning.  I would like to echo the comments of Commissioners Houghton and Andrade.

It occurs to me that many years ago whenever the state highway engineer or the chairman of the commission decided to move some of these meetings outside of Austin, he or she had an idea on his or her mind that perhaps they ought to move these meetings to where there was a more friendly, receptive audience than some of the ones that we get in Austin when we meet.  I think you're probably a home run for what he or she had in mind.

But there's some other things that have been accomplished by that.  One, we get to see the various parts of the state, and as Hope said, it's great to see a lot of the youth here, who are the future leaders of these communities of the state, take interest in what goes on.  And by conducting these meetings out in the field, if you will, you can learn what goes on, the deliberations of transportation decisions which affect not only the local communities but the state as a whole.

Secondly, we get to interface with you, the people who have great interest in the decisions that we make.  Rather than doing it in an office environment, we can visit with you one on one, and that's a great help to us.

And thirdly, and as important, we can share time with the people who really do the work, and that's our local district people.  And last night was no exception.  We had a wonderful barbecue and we got to visit with them.  There was a film basically describing what goes on in the district, and a lot goes on in this district:  $700 million plus under construction right now, the population is growing.  We visited the port yesterday, an economic engine of untold proportion which brings goods and economic opportunity and jobs to this area, and it's all part and parcel to why we go out and have these meetings where we do.

And so I want to thank you for your attendance today and thank you for all you do for this great state.  It's been a pleasure and the hospitality in South Texas just is without par.

MR. WILLIAMSON:  Thank you, Ted and Hope and John, and I would associate myself with the remarks of my fellow commissioners.  Thank you, Mario, for a great presentation, great trip yesterday around the area.  We thoroughly enjoyed the evening last night.

It is our practice to take the commission meetings on the road three or four times a year, depending upon the legislative session.  As John said, it gives us the opportunity to see with our own eyes and hear with our own ears about the successes and the failures that occur in the transportation world in the diverse parts of the state.

It also kind of prepares us for what we want to say to the legislature every other year about how the laws need to change, and we're starting something this year that will also permit us to do that perhaps in a more organized manner.  In June of this year ‑‑ I think it's June 8.  Is that right, Coby?

MR. CHASE:  June 8 and 9.

MR. WILLIAMSON:  June 8 and 9, we will host the first Statewide Texas Transportation Forum in Austin, Texas.  We're doing that in partnership with the Texas Good Roads Association, the oldest continuously active organization focused on transportation in the state of Texas.  And that will be held in Austin and there will be state, national and international transportation engineers, financiers and managers and operators of electronic devices, along with state and federal officials, talking transportation to the state.

I invite each and every one of you to take the time to come to Austin and attend that forum.  We're running this as a bit of a test to see how much interest there is in it.  If we believe it's valuable enough to the citizens of the state, we're then going to look at doing it on maybe a quarterly basis around the state to give everyone the opportunity to sit down and visit and exchange ideas and learn from each other.

I think there's a card, a registration card out in the lobby.  Is that correct, Coby?

MR. CHASE:  Yes.

MR. WILLIAMSON:  Out in the lobby, yes, ma'am.  Thank you.

So I invite you to attend that if you can make the time.

This is a history-making event today, the first time in the history of our commission ‑‑ which dates back to 1917 ‑‑ that we have met in Brownsville.  Now, we've been in the Rio Grande Valley, we've been in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, but this is the first time we've actually been in Brownsville.  The last time we were in the Valley was in July of 1997; the commission met in Weslaco.

We're very happy that we've been so pleasantly received, and please note for the record that the public notice of this meeting, containing all the items on the agenda, was filed with the Office of Secretary of State at 10:20 a.m. on April 13, 2006.

Now, normally we get to this point and we talk about some homework, we hold our cards up ‑‑ and I'm going to do that real fast for a reason ‑‑ we hold our cards up and we say if you're going to talk about an agenda item, you need to fill out the yellow card before you approach the dais, please; if you're going to talk in the general comment section towards the end of the meeting, we ask that you fill out a blue card, please.  And in any event, try to restrict your remarks to about three minutes so that everybody will have the opportunity to speak.

And we do other housekeeping matters and then we go right into the presentation, but we're going to break ranks a little bit today because I don't know about John and Hope and Ted, but this is the first time I've been to a commission meeting where elementary age children were actually in the meeting.  We've had some high school kids, I think, that are interested in the engineering world come in from time to time, but we've never had young children.

And sitting here listening to all of our opening remarks and watching the crowd of adults in attendance from highway contractors to engineers to transportation planners to TxDOT employees to bankers to transportation planners on the left, it occurs to me that while we all operate in our own self-interest ‑‑ and that's okay, that's what America is about, the ability to operate in your own self-interest ‑‑ we operate in our own self-interest because we have a common interest, and that is the common interest of a transportation system that will prevent congestion, keep the roads safe, make sure the air is not too dirty, make sure that we drive safely, and make sure that we don't have potholes, and we do that for those kids that are lined up against that back wall.

We don't really do it for ourselves because we know that in our lifetime most of this stuff is not going to be accomplished.  We've got a plan and we think the plan is going to work and we think along about 2030 this is going to be just a marvelous transportation world here in the state of Texas, but for most of us, the true value will be realized by these young people who are with us today.

So I know you're not ready for this, Teacher, but my mom was a teacher and I learned that she was prepared for anything, so why don't you bring those kids up here and let's let them introduce themselves, and they'll remember that this day they had the opportunity to tell us who they were and what was on their minds.

MS. SANAL:  Good morning.  My name is Norma Sanal and I'm the director for Brownsville Urban System, and they're here with Mr. Mark Maddy who is a member of PTAC, and I'll let Mr. Mark Maddy go ahead and present himself.

MR. WILLIAMSON:  Very good.

MR. MADDY:  Thank you.  I am Mark Maddy and I am a member of the PTAC and I am very proud to have the student council members of Morningside Elementary School here with us today, and I'll let them introduce themselves, starting with our president.

The Morningside Elementary School Student Council members introduced themselves as follows:

I am Michael Torres, and I'm the president of the Student Council Morningside Elementary.

Hi.  I am Isaac Castillo from Morningside Elementary.  I'm vice president of the Student Council.

I'm Alexis Martinez and I'm the secretary of Morningside Elementary Student Council.

I'm Leslie Gutierrez and I am the treasurer of Morningside Elementary.

Hello.  My name is Arturo Mendioloa and I'm historian for the Morningside Student Council.

Hi.  My name is Alondra Diaz and I'm the at-large member of Morningside Elementary.

Hi.  I'm Armando Ramirez, at large of Morningside Elementary.

Hi.  My name is Cynthia Mendiola and I'm the at-large for fourth grade.

My name is Rigoberto Bocardo and I'm fourth grade at-large for Student Council.

Hi.  I'm Kimberly Pena, I'm a representative for Morningside Elementary Student Council.

Hi.  I'm Adrian Gonzalez, I'm a representative for Morningside Student council.

Hi.  My name is Valeria Garcia and I'm a class representative.

Hi.  I'm Jackie Gutierrez and I'm a representative for Morningside Student Council.

Hi.  My name is Jesett Arredondo and I'm a class representative.

Hi.  My name is Jeronimo Herrera and I'm class representative for Morningside Elementary.

Hi.  My name is Janette Balli and I'm classroom representative.

I'm Mario Benavides and I'm a representative.

MR. WILLIAMSON:  And Mr. President, you get to ask us one question, so what one question would you ask us as representing the youth of Brownsville, Texas?  Just whatever comes in your mind is okay.  Do you want to caucus with everybody else and get everybody else's opinion.

Okay, everybody come up.  Let's do this right.  You discuss about what you want to ask us.

MR. HOUGHTON:  This girl has something to ask us.  What do you want to ask us?

MR. WILLIAMSON:  You meet right there at the microphone and we're going to wait and you decide what you want to ask us.

MICHAEL TORRES:  Does all the United States have this transportation?

MR. WILLIAMSON:  Like this?

MICHAEL TORRES:  Yes, all of the United States.

MR. WILLIAMSON:  That was a very good question.  I think what the president was asking maybe was is there a commission like this for the entire country and then does each state have one like this.

The answer is there's not a commission like this for the entire country, there is a federal highway administrator who is more like Mario on a national level, he's an appointee but he's a professional engineer that has certain qualifications, and he or she supervises the 50 states, and yes, every state has a commission like this, there are 50 of us.

Thank you very much.

(Applause.)

MR. MADDY:  I would also like to introduce my co-sponsor for the student council at Morningside, Ms. Mary Nieto.

MR. WILLIAMSON:  And if you will stay here, we've decided that we want a picture with you, so we're going to take just a second and get a picture.

(Pause for photos.)

MR. WILLIAMSON:  We thank each of you for indulging us on that.  Everyone on the dais has raised children, and we frequently say from this position that we're one people and this is one state, and kids is what it's all about because one day they'll be running things, and the better we leave it for them, the better off we're going to be.  And we thank you.

I have some documents in need to read from various elected officials, but I think it's more appropriate to let the meeting start, Mike.  Let's see, I think I would like to get the minutes approved, and I think that's what I'll do.

Members, we have the minutes from the March meeting before us.  Do I have a motion?

MR. JOHNSON:  Move approval.

MS. ANDRADE:  Second.

MR. WILLIAMSON:  I have a motion and a second.  All those in favor will signify by saying aye.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. WILLIAMSON:  All opposed, no.

(No response.)

MR. WILLIAMSON:  Motion carries.

Now, Mike, I think we'll move into the program and we'll go back to the agenda in a little bit.

MR. BEHRENS:  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

It's our custom when we go out of town on these out-of-town meetings where we hear from our local district and from local transportation leaders that are in the area and in the community, so to start with, I want to ask our Pharr District Engineer Mario Jorge to begin the presentation, and also introduce our local guests that are with us today.  Mario?

MR. JORGE:  Thank you, Mr. Behrens, commissioners.  It's a pleasure to have you here in the district.  We thoroughly enjoyed last night, the meeting with our employees.

Before I start my presentation, I would like to have a couple of individuals that are key partners in our transportation system here in the Valley that are essentially hosting this event or this meeting for us.

I'd like to introduce the mayor of Brownsville, Mr. Eddie Trevino, who is going to officially welcome the commission, and I'll introduce our Cameron County judge, Gilberto Hinojosa, who will also do the same.  Mayor?

MAYOR TREVINO:  Thank you, Mario.

Mr. Chairman, commissioners.  I need to deviate from my prepared comments because, first of all, we're honored by your presence and the fact that we're having the opportunity to host this meeting, but your actions at the beginning of this meeting give me a lot of pride, first of all, in being a Texan, and in knowing that clearly these ideals which you've exemplified by allowing and paying attention to some of the most important treasures in my community, clearly we must be on the right road to doing something good in Texas, and I commend you for allowing the importance of the children to take priority in this meeting.

MR. WILLIAMSON:  Thank you.

MAYOR TREVINO:  Obviously we're honored to have you here.  On behalf of the partnership established by the City of Brownsville and TxDOT, we welcome you to Brownsville.

Mr. Mario Jorge, our district engineer, and his staff, I use the term visionaries for the fact that they are always ready, prepared and looking ahead.  At our monthly MPO meetings, TxDOT staff communicates with us about our future needs and our mutual challenges.  They work cooperatively with the city, Cameron County, the Brownsville Navigation District, to identify and address solutions.  The Rio Grande Valley is well served by the efforts of these topnotch professionals at the Pharr District.

I have some brief observations about our transportation plans which I think we all need to realize include Mexico's infrastructure along with their highway plans.  The population of Brownsville and Matamoros, our sister city on the Mexican side, total almost a million people.  When you factor in the entire Valley, you're talking of over 4 million people between both sides of the border.  Those are populations that are extremely beneficial to the region and obviously create unusual challenges.

By forming these partnerships, we try to reduce these challenges and focus on realizing the benefits by working together.

For example, the wear and tear of overweight Mexican trucks on our state highways has been mitigated by the fees imposed by the Port of Brownsville for those vehicles.  Those fees have been used to repair our highways on the overweight truck corridor.

There are, of course, immense economic benefits to be gained from our international trade and partnership with Mexico, along with the Pacific Rim and the Asian nations.  Mr. Bernard List, our port director, will address some of these points later today.

In addition, Brownsville and the Rio Grande Valley connects, via new highways in Mexico, to the Pacific and Asia.  The land bridge which you will hear about is an example of a way to cut transfer costs for containers, allowing businesses and trades to expand into South Texas, something that is necessary.

You're going to hear from my good friend, Judge Gilberto Hinojosa, and others who will comment on the city and county plans regarding our West Rail Relocation project which is an international project regarding the relocation of the rails from both Brownsville and Matamoros, allowing for better economic development and less congestion, better environmental issues, and obviously the most important issue I think that's going to be addressed today, the vision of the Cameron County RMA.  We're pleased and honored to be a partner with them.

We're entering a time and period of immense potential, but as I like to tell the citizens of Brownsville, especially the children, while potential is nice, progress is even better.  With your help I am confident that we will be able to meet these challenges and build the needed trade corridors and our transportation infrastructure.

Good luck in today's work and in the rest of your efforts on behalf of the state of Texas.  God bless you.

MR. WILLIAMSON:  Thank you, Mayor.

(Applause.)

MR. JORGE:  Thank you, Mayor.  And now I'll introduce the county judge for Cameron County, Mr. Gilberto Hinojosa.

JUDGE HINOJOSA:  I'm Gilberto Hinojosa and I'm the Cameron County judge, and I want to welcome you to South Texas and the Rio Grande Valley.  I want to welcome you because what you have been talking about, what you talked about this morning, Mr. Chairman, and what this commission has done, I believe, in the last few years is present the regional approach to our transportation issues across the state of Texas, and in being here today, I think you recognize how important South Texas is to that regional approach.

What I want to first say before I go into my presentation, besides welcoming you and welcome to South Texas on behalf of the Cameron County Commissioners Court and the people of Cameron County, and I want to recognize most of my county commissioners court is here.  Edna Tamayo, Precinct 4 commissioner, David Garza, Precinct 3 commissioner, and I know John Wood is back there, Precinct 2; the Precinct 1 commissioner is under the weather today as well.  They're here along with me and all these leaders from the Rio Grande Valley because they recognize the importance of transportation in South Texas.

But I also want to say that your staff down here, Mario Jorge and all the people in the Pharr District office and in the San Benito office that you have, have got to be the best in the state.  If there's anybody better, I'm going to travel over there and see them, because there's nobody that gives better service to their local community than these people who work in transportation in the Rio Grande Valley.

Sure, we get up in the morning and it takes us a little bit longer to get to work or to get to the mall or to drop off our kids to school because of all the construction that's going on out there, but that's a sign of the progress in the Rio Grande Valley and the hard work and commitment of resources that you see by your staff, and I want to congratulate you for that and the rest of the people at TxDOT all across the state of Texas.

The Rio Grande Valley has got a lot of things going for it, as you know.  We have an expanding economy, fast-growing population ‑‑ we're going at a rate of about 30 percent every ten years ‑‑ and a unique geographical location.  Eddie was talking about there's about a million people between here and Matamoros and Brownsville, but if you take the entire Rio Grande Valley and northern Mexico, we're about 3 million people.

We have here in Cameron County something that no other community in the United States has:  we have three seaports, we have two commercial airports and a county airport as well, we have the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, we have highways, rail, and all of these in close proximity to Mexico.

There's a lot of challenges that we have for the future, however, that we are in the process of undertaking today on a regional approach in cooperation with your offices.  First I want to talk just briefly or give you a quick overview of our countywide railroad relocation project.

Now, Cameron County probably has the most advanced railroad relocation project, if not in the United States, in the state of Texas.  We are in the final stages of our West Rail Relocation project here in Brownsville where we're going to move all rail lines about six miles to the west, build a new international bridge for the rail, and eliminate at-grade crossings that would have cost the state of Texas somewhere upward of $60 million.

It's going to eliminate at-grade crossings that are dangerous to the public in a variety of ways.  Not only collisions are going to be avoided but the problems that are caused by emergency vehicles not able to cross is going to be eliminated and the congestion that we have.

You've got to remember that these rail lines were built when there was only a couple thousand people in Brownsville and in Matamoros, and today, as Eddie said, we have a million.  We need rail but not in the middle of town.

We also are in the process of doing the same thing for the northern part of the county, and working on a plan to relocate rail from San Benito and Harlingen.

The Port of Brownsville has done a lot.  They've relocated the rail lines to an area near Olmito, and that, combined with the efforts of the county, the city and all the partners, including TxDOT, I think will create a rail relocation project that will be a model for the United States and will make a big difference in terms of safety and cost savings for the state of Texas and the local community.  It will eliminate about 80 at-grade crossings throughout Cameron County.

We also have one of the first regional mobility authorities.  Some of the things that we talked about setting up a toll system across the county to meet infrastructure needs where there isn't sufficient resources.  Today, again, TxDOT is working very closely with us.

The Cameron County Regional Mobility Authority ‑‑ which you're going to hear from our chairman in just a minute, Mr. David Allex ‑‑ has been meeting almost every other week.  It's an active and strong board.  They are right now working on a project of building a second causeway to South Padre Island.  As you know, the number one segment of the Cameron County economy is tourism, and that is located primarily in South Padre Island.

We're also looking at a west loop, through the regional mobility authority, around the city of Brownsville, another road that may be financed through tolls.

The last thing I want to just bring up very quickly is this issue of an interstate highway through the Rio Grande Valley.  You know, and we've talked about many times, the fact that the Rio Grande Valley is the only community of this size in the nation that does not have access to an interstate highway.  We believe that it's not just important for the Rio Grande Valley that we have access to an interstate highway, but it's important for the state of Texas and across the rest of the United States that we be linked to the rest of the United States by an interstate highway.

We believe that there's enormous potential for the extension of I-37 into the Rio Grande Valley to build upon existing infrastructure.  You will receive a resolution presented by David Garza, Commissioner Garza, to talk about how we're united on a regional approach to have this interstate corridor into the Rio Grande Valley.  Again, this is something that's good for us and it's good for the people of the state of Texas and the rest of the United States.

We have four international bridges just in Cameron County, three of them that are owned by Cameron County; three seaports; two commercial airports; we have an inland waterway; ocean freight.  We have everything that's set up to be able to connect up to an interstate system that will benefit the rest of the state of Texas if we are able to accomplish this.  And again, the regional mobility authority is looking at this project along with TxDOT in order to be able to move this along and get it done at least in our children's lifetime, if not our lifetime.

Again, our state will be made stronger if Cameron County is stronger economically.  Cameron County will only become stronger economically if we have the transportation infrastructure necessary to develop the economy which we all agree has an enormous potential.  We want to continue to work with you, work with your staff, work with the district office to ensure that we can accomplish this goal, and your presence here I think is an example of your commitment towards this goal.

So thank you for being here again, and we look forward to working with you in the future.

MR. WILLIAMSON:  Thank you, Judge.

(Applause.)

MR. JORGE:  Thank you, Judge.  And we've have a tremendous partnership with Cameron County for many years in right of way acquisition, project development, unlike any other, so we've been very successful in getting projects completed because of their partnership with us.

Being in Cameron County, I would like to just have the mayor from our second largest city here in Cameron County, Mayor Rick Rodriguez from Harlingen, welcome the commission also.  Mayor?

MAYOR RODRIGUEZ:  Thank you, Mario.  Good morning.  My name is Rick Rodriguez and I am the mayor of Harlingen, Texas.  It is my distinct pleasure and privilege to represent the city of Harlingen.  I want to extend a warm welcome to all of you and a special thanks for your presence and support here.

We are pleased to have a strong relationship with the Pharr District, especially Mario Jorge, Arnold Cortez, and of course our RMA chairman, David Allex.  We're also committed to building infrastructure that will carry us into the future, and extending and building an interstate that is crucial for our future, therefore, I'm here to voice our support for extending I-37 via US 77.

We're also willing to not only support you vocally and morally, but we're also here to extend our financial support to this project.  We're willing to commit $250,000 a year for ten years, or $2.5 million.

I know this commission is visionary and therefore shares our vision because building an interstate is crucial to the growth and development of our community.  We are working on several projects, many of which include moving our railroads out of our town, extending our port and our airport.  We believe that building and extending an interstate to the Valley is not only needed but necessary.  Please know that we are here to support and work with you in preparing our region for future growth and development.

Thank you again for being here and thank you again for all the support that you give us.

MR. WILLIAMSON:  Thank you, Mayor.

(Applause.)

MR. JORGE:  We'll go ahead and start our presentation.  My presentation will be shared with some of our partners, and again, it's an effort to relay information about our district, some of the goings-on and some of the challenges that we face.  Some of the information may be information that you have seen, commissioners, but I think it will be very informational for the audience, some of the items that we're going to cover.

This is a map of our district.  We cover the southernmost eight counties in Texas.  We have offices throughout our district, and you see there the blue square, that is our Pharr District office located at 83 and 281 expressway; we have three area offices.

One is in Pharr, located there in pink.  That office handles all the projects in Hidalgo County and some of the major projects in Starr County, and they currently have over $350 million under construction.

We have an area office in San Benito here in Cameron County, and they handle all of the Cameron/Willacy/Kenedy responsibilities, and they are right now handling $405 million under construction.

And then we have our office in Hebronville, the hometown of Mr. Amadeo Saenz, and that office is responsible for Jim Hogg, Zapata, Starr and Brooks counties, essentially handles all the rural sections in our district and handles all of our preventive maintenance throughout the district.

Of course, you see the several maintenance offices that we have throughout the district and they handle the maintenance responsibilities for each of their respective areas.

The population of our district ‑‑ and this is on the U.S. side based on the 2000 census ‑‑ is over a million people.  When you combine the population of the north of Matamoros, like the judge mentioned, the population of the general area is over 3 million people.

We cover 2300 centerline miles, 111 of which are freeway centerline miles, and lane miles 5700 and growing with a lot of the work that's going on on the freeway.  Daily vehicle miles traveled is an important number that indicates the activity that we have in our district, and that is the seventh largest volume in the state of Texas, so it's very significant to note that.

Now, our ability to function and address the transportation needs of our community is largely tied to the operating budget that we currently operate with.  Our design budget includes mainly in-house design work and project management, and on an annual basis it's $6-1/2 million.

Our maintenance budget includes both in-house work as well as contracted work, and as you well know, this part of our work has become more and more costly.  Our district highways are more urbanized in nature and with the added capacity that we have experienced, the demands to keep an acceptable level of maintenance has been difficult to meet.  Rehab and preventive maintenance are prioritized unless funding is available for added capacity.

Our construction volume currently, as we discussed, is over $700 million ‑‑ actually, with the last month's letting is pushed to $780 million which is a record high for our district.

Our design consultant budget on an annual basis runs somewhere around $16 million.  We're currently doing as much as 75 percent of our work contracted due to the demand that the construction oversight has given us.  We manage over 30 active contracts, 17 different firms are doing work with us.  In addition to that, we have Texas Transportation Institute from Texas A&M that does a lot of research for us through an interagency agreement.

Our right of way budget, you see there, is $18 million.  Our right of way staff has been extremely aggressive pursuing acquisition, they've been very successful, but besides our in-house staff, we also have currently four acquisition consultants working for us and actively acquiring right of way.

And of course, our public transportation budget, you'll hear later on in the presentation from Norma Zamora how we're putting those funds to use in our regional transportation system.

This shows the progression of our letting volumes in the Pharr District over the last 15 years.  As you can see, there has been a steady increase.  The NAFTA program which was instituted by the commission and came into effect in the mid to late '90s, and the chart indicates the rapid increase in letting around that time.

And the challenge that we all face and will continue to face for the next few years is to maintain that growth in letting over the next few years by utilizing a lot of the innovative financial tools that are available to us, and again, by introducing and working closely with partners such as the RMA and MPOs in order to bring even more options to the table.  And you're going to hear a little bit more about those initiatives later.

This slide as put together by our planning staff in conjunction with our MPOs and it indicates a population projection comparison between the Rio Grande Valley and the other major urban areas in the state.  And again, this population projection is based on the growth rates that were experienced in the previous decade.  The Valley has one of the highest growth rates in the nation.

And as you can see down here, this is the Rio Grande Valley population as of the 2000 census, you can see Austin and San Antonio above it.  Of course, Houston and Dallas are much higher.  As you project the growth rate over the next 30 years, you can see where we're going to wind up being very close to Austin and San Antonio, assuming the growth rates are maintained.

This represents tremendous transportation challenges for our region, but as you heard throughout the presentation, we are definitely working in partnership to address them.

Our district has the largest number of international crossings in the state.  The existing international crossings provide significant challenges in the number of vehicles and trucks that cross daily.  The daily freight and vehicle crossings congest our arterials and add to the safety concerns that we already have.

A recent provision in the SAFETEA-LU highway bill created the Coordinated Border Infrastructure Program which will help us address some of those needs for mobility and capacity at or connecting to our existing international crossings.  And we'll be working with our MPOs and bridge owners, port directors and GSA to identify those projects.

We've also been working with several entities on proposed crossings which you see there in red.  The Anzalduas Bridge which is proposed in Hidalgo County south of Mission, we're working with the local development board in a pass-through financing project to connect the Anzalduas Bridge to the US 83 expressway.  Of course, the Donna Bridge is also in the process of being worked on, and we have some projects identified to connect them.

The West Rail Bridge ‑‑ which you'll hear a little bit more about later ‑‑ is a project that is being pursued by Cameron County and the RMA.  And of course, the Port of Brownsville Bridge that you saw yesterday, the location of the proposed bridge that the port is working on.

The next several slides are going to show you some of the international bridges which have the largest volume of truck crossings.  Now, this is not one of them.

(General laughter.)

MR. JORGE:  But I thought I would start with a picture of our ferry in Los Ebanos in Hidalgo County.  As far as I know, this is the only hand-pulled ferry that is still operational that I'm aware of, and you can see how it functions.  They cannot operate, obviously, 365 days because it depends on the flow of the river.  But I've taken it and it's interesting.  And when you get there, you actually get out of the car and you help out.

Let's talk about trucks now.  This is the Veterans International Bridge in Brownsville.  This bridge currently carries an average of 16,000 northbound trucks per month and 170,000 northbound passenger vehicles per month.  There is a temporary border state inspection facility operated by DPS at this location, and we have a permanent one planned in the next couple of years.  It also happens to be a point of destination for the overweight corridor from the Port of Brownsville, as you saw yesterday on the tour, with the steel slag bridge also has a connection from US 77/83 which has been constructed to interstate standards.

This is the B&M Bridge which is a combination rail/vehicular bridge operating in downtown Brownsville. It currently carries an average of 200,000 northbound passenger vehicles per month.  Of course, the West Rail Relocation project will construct a new rail bridge west of the city and allow this bridge to be used exclusively for vehicular traffic.  And it also happens to be the termini for the West Loop project which is one of the projects being proposed by the RMA and you will hear about that later in the program.

The Free Trade Bridge in Los Indios south of Harlingen is another Cameron County bridge which currently handles freight.  An average of 4,200 northbound trucks and 62,000 passenger vehicles per month utilize the facility, and we also have a temporary inspection facility there.

The Pharr-Reynosa Bridge, located directly south of Pharr along 281 in Hidalgo County, carries an average of 40,000 northbound trucks and 160,000 northbound passenger vehicles per month.  We also have a border station facility and a permanent is planned.  It also has a fast lane operating for northbound freight.

We have several projects being worked on by TxDOT, Hidalgo County and the newly RMA once they take shape which will provide improved mobility and connectivity to the bridge, and I'll discuss some of these later.

You all have seen this before.  This is an aerial shot of a typical temporary inspection facility operated by the Department of Public Safety, and we have one at three locations.  It's a five-acre site at those facilities that will be replaced with permanent ones.

The Port of Brownsville has been a great partner with us over many years in developing several transportation projects.  I will cover those, but I would first like to introduce our port director who is going to provide the commission an overview of operations and proposed improvement projects at the port, and then I'll review the cooperation that has taken place on many projects and what is planned for the future.

So at this time, I'll introduce our port director.

MR. WILLIAMSON:  Mario, if you would permit me.

MR. JORGE:  Yes, sir.

MR. WILLIAMSON:  I have several letters that during your presentation I need to read into the record and I'd like to do them at break points so as to not overwhelm us all.

As most of you know, the legislature is meeting in special session to consider changes to the tax system and the public education finance system.  Your senator and all of your House members had to miss the commission meeting here because of legislative requirements and not because they don't wish to be with us.  All of them expressed support at various levels for what will transpire today.

From Senator Lucio ‑‑ who is a great transportation senator, I might add ‑‑ I'll read it into the record.

"As you're aware from our frequent conversations ‑‑ this letter is addressed to me personally ‑‑ and from the tours you've taken in the area, there are many important infrastructure improvements needed in the Rio Grande Valley and in Cameron County in general.  Development of these projects will greatly increase mobility, enhance safety, and bring a better quality of life to the citizens I represent.

"One organization that focuses on a regional approach is the newly created Cameron County Regional Mobility Authority.  While created only a year and a half ago, they have focused on a plan that will have immediate infrastructure impact in the area.  With hurricane season coming, I'm particularly interested and supportive of their efforts to build a second causeway.

"As you know, I cannot attend the commission meeting today but I know the commission will have a fruitful and informative visit to my Senate district and I look forward to discussing these issues with you in the future.  In my absence, I extend my full support to the effort of the Cameron County Regional Mobility Authority and respectfully request that you consider supporting the agenda items on the calendar.  Thank you for your consideration.  Do not hesitate to call me.  Senator Eddie Lucio."

Eddie Lucio is a true transportation senator.

Please go ahead, Mario.

MR. JORGE:  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

At this point I'd like to introduce a great partner of our transportation system in the Valley, and that is the Port of Brownsville port director, Mr. Bernard List.  Mr. List and I have something in common:  he just moved in from Miami and I lived in Miami for about a couple of years a while back and I still have a lot of family in Miami, so we have something in common.  Mr. List?

MR. WILLIAMSON:  Welcome.  We're glad you're in Texas.

MR. LIST:  Thank you, sir.  Good morning.  My name is Bernard List, and yes, I do come from Florida, I was assistant director at the Port of Miami.  And thank you again, commissioners, for hosting this meeting in our area because that's very important to us.

I also went to Oklahoma State University, so don't hold those two things against me, please.

(General laughter.)

MR. LIST:  We had the honor of hosting the commissioners yesterday at the port and we gave a presentation, we went through a tour of the port, and we were able to showcase some of the highlights of what is happening at our dynamic port.

I want to take a moment to address an item that Commissioner Johnson asked me on the way because I expressed that we had just had a record year of 5,185,000 tons of cargo through the port, and he said, Are those metric or short tons?  I said, Those are metric tons which are larger than short tons.  And then he said, Well, how much is a metric ton?  And those numbers are a little rusty, and I got the 2,200 correct but I missed a little, so I went back and checked and the correct answer is 2,204.6 pounds is a metric ton.  And then he asked me also about a long ton and that's the British ton, and that is 2,240 pounds.  So now we got it all straight.

MR. WILLIAMSON:  That's not 2,240 stones?

(General laughter.)

MR. LIST:  So anyway, you know, 5 million tons of cargo is significant.  It would mean about 6 million short tons in U.S. and American tons.  So in terms of ports worldwide in this nation and within Texas, that's significant.  We were talking about how our port is 42 feet deep and that's very significant depth for any port.

Back to the business at hand, we certainly want to take a moment to acknowledge the good relationship that we have with all the good folks at TxDOT.  Amadeo Saenz, of course, is very interactive with us, and I heard also yesterday that he was hired by our own Nino Gutierrez at TxDOT before he retired.  Thank you, Nino, good job.  And also Mario Jorge and Arnold Cortez are significant in many of the things we're doing here.

For example, the relocation of State Highway 48 not only is a major artery into the port but it decongests all the mobility down to South Padre Island, the tourism that the judge mentioned earlier today.

Also the railroad relocation project which is a major home run, and that accomplished again through the direction of Nino Gutierrez, eliminates 79 of 87 railroad crossings and that's of major significance to our activity here.

In addition to that, our overweight activity, and as we explained yesterday, our steel slag accounts for about 2.4 million, metric tons of our cargo, and a lot of that moves over the roads and needs to have that access to be able to carry 125,000 pounds each to make it economically feasible for those trucks to survive.

And finally, for State Highway 48, the port donated 30 acres for turnabouts and conservation easement which is just another example of how we've worked very closely together.

I'll go through this very quickly, we have a tight schedule today.  We are the westernmost terminus of the Inland Waterway System but also we're the southernmost terminus ‑‑ and I think that's significant ‑‑ in our location.  Right against another country we have deep water and we have a lot of acreage and a lot of benefits to offer.

Here you can see our growth, significant.  We had a record year in '70 and this is our 70th year, over 5 million metric tons.  And our overweight permit traffic is growing, 44,200 in 2005, so we're growing.

Our BRG rail traffic is significant.  We worked hand in hand with our own railroad to accommodate the steel that needs to go over to Monterrey, Monclova, all the other areas in northern Mexico where that is processed, and as we discussed yesterday, a lot of it comes back into the United States through the NAFTA umbrella to go to consumers here in the states and other places beyond.

Very important to us is our new project, Dock 16 which will be a duplication of Dock 15.  It is a deepwater facility that will allow to duplicate the ability to bring in heavy steel ships, container ships, and other deep draft vessels, and it avoids the congestion at one terminal so we can get simultaneously two large ships for the terminal, you can handle both of them, not impact them with demurrage charges which could run up to $60,000 per stay which would drive the business away to another port.

And there is our proposed international truck corridor which, again, as we move on and the cargo grows, the steel continues to grow, this will avoid transporting over the roadways and directly into Mexico and out of Mexico.

We're also, in the Dock 15/Dock 16 area with our brand new Gottwald Crane, capable of doing 25 moves an hour for containers.  We don't have containers at this moment, we just have a company that's established a container facility, a bonded facility that will already in the next week or so be able to house oceangoing containers.  Hapag Lloyd has already made a commitment to drop and pick their containers here at the Port of Brownsville, and this is our first step towards containerization.

We're looking at short-sea shipping which would be like a feeder service between us and Houston to start out.  We know that the Far East cargo, a lot of it coming all-water from the Far East through the Panama Canal zone will come straight into our area for consumption into the Valley.

It is every day more costly bringing it down via truck and congesting highways and so on, and if we can get this on the water with the higher fuel prices and everything, we believe and our numbers show that it would be a significant savings to the consumers, H.E.B., Wal-Mart, Home Depot, all those folks in the Valley and across the river as well.  So we're working very diligently on making this happen, and our crane ‑‑ which is in the above picture ‑‑ has the capability of handling container ships.

On that, I'll take a moment to talk about our land bridge ambitions, and that would be, for example, from Lazaro Cardenas bring more line haul container activity into the Port of Brownsville over the rail, what you call piggyback or double-stack container cars to bring them into the Port of Brownsville to further ship them from Brownsville to other destinations on the water, on the rail truck, or short-sea shipping again into the Port of Houston.  So we're going to be working also with TxDOT and some other folks on making this a reality in the near future.

We have a proposed deepening project going to 55 feet seven miles in.  That would even make us a more outstanding and attractive facility for larger vessels, larger companies to look at us as a real player.  We're also looking at maybe coming in 45-46 feet all the way into our turning basin ‑‑ which is here at the end ‑‑ but at 42 feet we could actually bring in a container ship with 4,000 TUs, 5,000 TUs, so this is evidence that we are prepared to take on the container business.

MR. WILLIAMSON:  Hang on a second, Bernard.

MR. LIST:  Yes, sir.

MR. WILLIAMSON:  Can you go back?

MR. LIST:  Yes.

MR. WILLIAMSON:  So the last part of that sentence, oil and gas offshore platforms, so you envision that they could be constructed and towed out.  Is that why you make a reference to that?

MR. LIST:  That part there, yes, sir.  One of our tenants is AmpHel and they have like 2,200 full-time employees repairing and fabricating parts or fabricating rigs, and that's another part of our deepening justification and widening justification because a lot of those units are very wide and when they come in and come out and turn, it becomes a real challenge.  So we certainly want to move forward with that.  Right now we're doing our deepening and widening study with the Corps in Galveston and that will take some time, but have to go through all those steps and all the environmental challenges to be able to get to the point where we'll start that deepening and widening.

They can do pretty much everything but they're larger units and with the storms ‑‑ in the past the storms coming up, there is a bigger market out there that they're not capturing that they could capture if they had a deeper, wider entrance here.

MR. WILLIAMSON:  Thank you.

MR. LIST:  You're welcome.

And this is what I touched on before, the proposed rail canal project and it would be what you call a land bridge from one side of Mexico all the way over.  It's what they call a dry canal versus the Panama Canal.  And in some countries they talk a lot about just a highway generally from one port to another port, and then beyond on the water or on the land as well.

And that is my presentation today.  Thank you.  If you have any questions?

MR. WILLIAMSON:  Whose railroad car is that looking at us?

MR. LIST:  The railroad engines belong to the district which is the Brownsville Navigation District, and the BRG is a creation, like a subsidiary of the BND, they have their own board.  We work hand in hand.  The assets belong to the district, and basically it's ten engines that it's the power to move the cars.  The cars come over a lot from Mexico, what used to be TSM, and now it's Kansas City Southern de Mexico, so the cars are supplied by them.  They come through UP to us but our engines are the ones that do all the work over in the Port of Brownsville and move the cars over the bridge into Mexico and back.

MR. WILLIAMSON:  Members, do you have questions of this gentleman?

MS. ANDRADE:  Thank you.

MR. LIST:  Thank you.

MR. WILLIAMSON:  Thank you for that presentation.  And Mario, while you're walking up, my very good friend, longtime friend, Rene Oliveira dropped by a letter personally.

"I write with warmest regards thanking you for selecting Brownsville for your commission meeting.  We're grateful for your interest and thoughtfulness.

"As you have seen from your time in Cameron County, there are important transportation improvements that will enhance international commerce and improve mobility and safety in our communities.

"I'm proud of the work done by our Cameron County Regional Mobility Authority which was formed over a year ago, three members comprise.  The members are experienced, visionary persons who have begun an aggressive strategic plan focused on financing projects for the quickest manner possible.

"I regret not being able to attend today due to the special legislative session.  I offer my support to the mobility authority and ask for favorable consideration on the agenda item.  Thank you for being in Brownsville.  Please do not hesitate to call."

Please continue, Mario.

MR. JORGE:  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I wanted to show you a slide and identify some of the projects that the port has been a key ally with us and some of the future projects planned that will improve the connectivity to and from the port and really to the city of Brownsville and Cameron County.

What you see here is a railroad relocation project.  Here's the Port of Brownsville, here's 77/83.  This railroad relocation project which Mr. List alluded to has already been completed after many years of hard work by the port and county and the State of Texas and the federal government.  That is already in place.

The project that is currently under construction to complete the expansion of State Highway 48 ‑‑ which also Mr. List mentioned ‑‑ that goes all the way to Port Isabel is a critical link for us, and I will tell you that without the port being an ally, we probably would not have been able to succeed on that project.  It took many years of difficult negotiations on various issues, but I will say that the port did a couple of things that really helped our cause.

One was they dedicated a 1,000-foot wide conservation easement that helped us mitigate some endangered species issues.  We constructed a bridge that will handle those endangered species but without the port dedicating 1,000 foot of their own land as a conservation easement, that project would not have been a success.

The second issue that they assisted us tremendously in is digging a pilot channel from the ship channel across 48 which facilitated the flooding of Bayou Grande which has been creating a very serious dust problem and which has created health problems in some of these areas, and also addressed some very difficult habitat concerns that Fish and Wildlife had for many years.  This effort has been applauded by many, many environmental agencies, groups and local communities, so it was a great effort on their part.

We're building a bridge also to cross that channel into the Bayou Grande to maintain that flow, so that was a huge accomplishment.  That helped us with the wetland mitigation that we needed for the project.  So those two things were extremely important for us.

The other project I want to mention to you is FM 511 which FM 511 is designated on the ISTEA legislation as a segment or leg of I-69.  We're in the process of developing this project.  We are purchasing right of way, as we speak, sufficient right of way to allow us to construct a future controlled access facility, although in the meantime we'll have a four-lane divided highway.  It's going to provide a loop on the east side of Brownsville, connection directly into the port.  It will have room for future dedicated truck lanes when the time comes and when we can identify funding mechanisms with the RMA.

And that project, the port is dedicating a significant amount of right of way to the department, to the state, so we're very thankful for working with them on that.

We also have a project that we're working with the City of Brownsville and Cameron County which is to create and east loop connection from the Veterans International Bridge, a new location and then around on 511 to connect back to the entry point near the port.  And again, as you can see, this creates a mobility corridor on the east side of Brownsville that will facilitate freight traffic and vehicular traffic to and from the port, as well as for the general area on the east side of Brownsville.  A very important project, mobility project that we're working with them on, and the RMA is going to be a big part of this.

We also have, as you know, an Intracoastal Waterway that we are part of.  It's within the boundaries of our district.  The causeway bridge spans this particular waterway and connects Port Isabel to South Padre Island has had significant work done.  One of the projects that was installed within one year of the collapse due to the barge accident in 2001 is a collapse detection project that is a system that activates gates, flashers and overhead message boards in case of a span collapse.  It's a very technologically advanced system based on fiber optics and it's one that we're very proud to have installed.

Using the Pier Protection Program that the commission approved for causeway bridges in the state, we installed several concrete dolphins designed to withstand the impact from forward-loaded barges and those have been installed in front of the piers extending approximately 500 feet from each side of the Intracoastal on all four corners.  Makes us sleep well at night.

We followed the research recommendations on a process to provide extended life to the concrete footings and columns in the very aggressive marine environment, so we've installed a cathodic protection system on the entire bridge and we're really confident that this will delay the start of corrosion and prolong the life of the bridge as long as we can.

And of course, in conjunction with the RMA, we will continue to develop and work on the project to construct a second causeway to South Padre Island.  There are many environmental and financial issues that need to be considered in the evaluation of the preferred corridor, but it is, nevertheless, an important project and it is on the agenda for the RMA, so I'll let them cover that later.

Our major corridors, just a quick rundown.  Everything you see here in black is expansions that have been completed over the past few years.  This is roughly about 30 miles of work already completed to six-lane expansion.  Everything in red is currently under construction which is about 70 miles.  It's the source of a lot of aggravation for motorists but they do see the progress that's being made.  And the green is proposed projects that we'll have in the next couple of years.

We work with three MPOs in our district ‑‑ I think we're the only district that has three MPOs.  First of all, Hidalgo County MPO which is a TMA with over 200,000 in population; the director is Mr. Andrew Canon.  Harlingen-San Benito MPO is an urban MPO; Mr. Juan Sanchez is our director.  And Brownsville MPO, also another urban MPO, which Mark Lund is the director.  You can see how they are very close together and we'll see what happens with the next census whether we can have a Valley-wide MPO.

At this time I'm going to ask Andrew Canon, as the spokesman for the three MPOs, to give a quick presentation on some of the important items that the MPOs are looking at.

MR. WILLIAMSON:  And while you're walking up, Representative Escobar sent us a letter thanking us for having our monthly meeting in Brownsville, and endorsing the projects that will improve mobility, enhance safety and bring a better quality of life to the organization.  He specifically endorses the focused countywide and regional transportation vision of the Cameron County Regional Mobility Authority.  He fully supports it and encourages us to move forward on the agenda item, and we appreciate him taking the time to send the letter.

MR. CANON:  Thank you, commissioners.

This morning I'd like to introduce myself.  My name is Andrew Canon.  I have the honor and privilege of being the director of the Hidalgo County MPO.  I'd also like to introduce my planning partners.  I have Juan Sanchez with me here today from the Harlingen-San Benito MPO, as well as Alfonso Vallejo, representing the Brownsville MPO today.

The Lower Rio Grande Valley is home to some of the greatest cross-border growth within the state.  Reynosa is the only border city that has an increase in maquiladoras and employees in 2005.  The amount of maquiladoras have increased significantly here along the Texas border in the Lower Rio Grande Valley region.  Reynosa exported a dollar value increase by almost 151 percent in the last five years.  In comparison, Juarez had an increase of 39 percent.  Our growth is quite spectacular that we're undertaking here in the Valley that you'll hear about and that you've heard more about this morning.

Cameron and Hidalgo counties have a total of eight existing bridges along our border with proposed four additional bridges:  two within Hidalgo County, the Donna Bridge and Anzalduas Bridge; and two within Cameron County, the Port of Brownsville Bridge and the West Rail Bridge.

These bridges are necessary to support the growth that the region is undergoing.  For example, Matamoros, Mexico has a population of approximately 700,000 citizens living directly across the border from Brownsville.  Reynosa has an estimated population of 1.2 million people, and the Hidalgo County urbanized area boundary alone is worth noting that it was the only urbanized area to double in size between the 1990 and the 2000 census populations in the state of Texas.

Hidalgo County UAB encompasses 800,000 people.  Hidalgo County, Brownsville, and Harlingen-San Benito all have a forecasted population rate of 4 percent.  This, compounded by the fact that Mexico has an estimated growth rate of 12 percent, makes us one of the fastest growing areas in the state, if not the fastest growing.

Along the way to address this is that the Hidalgo County MPO recently has undertaken the initiative and is about to sign a memorandum of understanding with the City of Reynosa and with the City of Rio Bravo ‑‑ they serve as ex officio members of my policy board ‑‑ and we hope to be able to do this and to have this memorandum of understanding in place so that we may coordinate our efforts better across the border on what our planning needs and our congestion needs over the next 25 years may be.

The great growth within the Lower Rio Grande Valley brings with it other aspects as well, such as the amount of traffic moving north and south across our bridges for commercial and personal purposes.  The Pharr Bridge is the only bridge in the Lower Rio Grande Valley that has experienced a dramatic increase in truck traffic.  There has been approximately a 27 percent increase in northbound truck traffic within the past five years on the Pharr Bridge alone.  Another example is that from Brownsville to Zapata in 2005 there were 958,793 northbound truck crossings alone, accompanied by 23,500,000 passenger vehicle and buses coming northbound across our bridges.  As you can see, the amount of congestion that we have is growing insurmountable compared to our population growth.

As a part of our increased truck and freight traffic along the border, the amount of commodities crossing logically have increased significantly as well.  The steel trade has increased significantly after the bridge at Los Tomates opened operations to the Port of Brownsville.  From 1997 to 2004, the imported steel has increased from 1.2 to 2.2 metric tons, or an increase of 81.5 percent.  Steel arrives to our area from such countries as Brazil, Venezuela, the United Kingdom, Korea, Mexico, and of course, the U.S.

Along with this, rail traffic to and from Mexico has not slowed either.  Brownsville and Hidalgo both have seen dramatic growth in the amount of dollars for imported goods shipped into and out of Mexico in the last five years.  Brownsville has seen a 31 percent increase in rail traffic within the last five years.

I'll move on to the mobility plan.  As the chairman clearly stated to us yesterday afternoon and this morning, local areas have now been provided the opportunity to identify our potential needs and address the mobility concerns that we have over the next 25 years.  Along with identifying these potential needs, we've also been given the opportunity to address how the local areas could address financing or future mobility needs in our projects.  Thus, the Texas Metropolitan Mobility Plan has been developed.

The Hidalgo County MPO, as one of eight larger MPOs in the state, has been undertaking and working on the TMMP over the past several years.  The Hidalgo County MPO has identified a $787 million shortfall for Hidalgo County alone over the next 25 years.  To address this shortfall, Hidalgo County, working with citizens groups, board members, staff, TxDOT and other entities have been coming up with local initiatives to address our financial needs over the next 25 years.

These two slides present two initiatives that were undertaken and presented to my board recently, one being a possible additional toll at bridges to capture those vehicles that are coming across and using our roadways on a daily basis, and the other being a local sales tax initiative.  This is just two of five initiatives that we have at the moment that we're working on to address our needs over the next 25 years.

Along with that, on October 31, 2000, Chairman Williamson met with the 17 non-TMAs in Austin to kick off a similar initiative to the TMMP.  This initiative entitled the Texas Urbanized Mobility Plan, or TUMP.  Mario and Jorge and myself co-chair this panel and we've been working diligently with the 17 smaller non-TMO MPOs around the state to also address their needs over the next 25 years, as well as identifying any initiatives they may have to address these needs.

I will say that we've made a great deal of progress and that we're on time to meet our June deadline that we have for our draft to the commission for review and our September final submission of our document.

I'll speak briefly on some of the initiatives undertaken by the Hidalgo County MPO, one of these being our congestion management system which is quite instrumental in what we do in preparation of identifying our needs over the next 25 years.

The Hidalgo County MPO has the data collection of over 500 lane miles within Hidalgo County.  We have a consultant that drives out these 500 lane miles for us on a yearly basis, information is captured in two-second intervals via GPS accompanied by a video.  It's become quite a useful tool in public involvement.  It allows us to be able to click on several of the links, any of these identified red lines that we have on this map, and we can show the public what it is that was seen at the time that the system was driven out.

That's important for us because we don't want to identify areas that have construction taking place at this time as an area that has serious congestion problems because the congestion may be due to the construction that's undertaken, therefore, we know that the problem is actually being addressed.

We also moved on to a CMS Tier 2 approach ‑‑ and it was an analysis of four corridors, those corridors listed there:  FM 88 in Weslaco, 907 in Alamo, 495 in Mission and 10th Street which is one of the busiest arterials that runs through the middle of McAllen ‑‑ to do a real-world analysis of how we could address the congestion concerns of these communities.

I will say that the City of Weslaco has moved forward with one of our initiatives identified and they are now looking at the possibility of installing raised medians along FM 88 as a part of their access management initiative to help relieve some of the congestion problems that they're suffering there in that city as it grows quite quickly.

And I'd also like to say that for the first time we have a regional model coming down to our area from TP&P up in Austin.  Along with our three independent models that we use and to forecast out our needs over the 250-year horizon that we have to, this is going to be an incredible tool for us to use since we know that we are on a regional basis and that the traffic does not stop or begin at our boundaries or at our county line.

I would also like to say that this regional approach gives more emphasis to the need for the formation of a possible one regional MPO to be the voice of the region as a whole instead of three independent MPOs.

Also, in Hidalgo County, one of the initiatives we've undertaken and partnered with Cameron County and the MPOs here is we work with all of the EMS providers within Hidalgo County and we are soon to release an RFP for a non-destination, non-radioactive HAZ route study.  Along with the I-69 possibilities that we have here, any interstate corridors, we realized that this was something that we needed to look at with the increased truck traffic that we have from Mexico to assure the safety to the population and to the citizens of Hidalgo County and Cameron County as well.

Harlingen and San Benito, it's worth noting, already has such a hazardous route in place within their city limits, so we're hoping to work in conjunction with this.

That's all I have for you today.  Any questions?

MR. WILLIAMSON:  Do you find that the mobility plan we've asked you to develop is revealing anything you didn't already know?

MR. CANON:  Yes, sir.  I think what the mobility plan has done is actually shined a light on what we weren't looking at before.  We knew the dollars that we had over the next 25 years, we knew what was probable to be able to be built out, we knew where we thought we were going, but the mobility plan has done for us is shine a light on that shortfall that we really didn't give that much emphasis to.  We sort of looked at the side of what we knew we were going to be building, we never sat down and took into consideration, in conjunction with our population growth, how much of a gap we would have that would continue to grow over that 25 years, and thus, leave us in a bigger hole if we don't address it now.

So I think it's been an incredible tool for us to use and I think it's a significantly valued tool for the 17 non-TMA MPOs as well.

MR. WILLIAMSON:  Thank you.

Any other questions?

MR. HOUGHTON:  Yes.  You glossed over ‑‑ or I didn't pick up on it real quick ‑‑ the three independent MPOs acting as one.

MR. CANON:  Yes, sir.

MR. HOUGHTON:  Is there any movement to merge all the MPOs?

MR. CANON:  I know that there was a movement a couple of years back on this initiative, and I guess what I should say to be politically correct, this is sort of a personal initiative that I have.  I think that we as a region need to resonate our voice as one up to Austin as well as up to Washington, D.C., I think any time that we resonate independently and separately as three separate entities instead of one whole.  Also, as a whole being equivalent to the size of Austin, would give more impact to what we have to say possibly.  I think it's important.

Half of my staff ‑‑ I have a staff of nine ‑‑ half of my staff actually live in Cameron County or drive from further away into Hidalgo County.  We know that our traffic congestion and the concerns that we have for the movement of people and goods do not stop at our urbanized boundaries or at the county line.  It seems to me somewhat silly, if you will, for me to undertake initiatives for Hidalgo County and then have them stop at the county line when I know that my planning partners are undertaking duplicate initiatives within Cameron County.  Instead of doing it three times, I think we could do it once as a whole and have a greater impact and better benefit to the citizens of Cameron and Hidalgo counties.

MR. HOUGHTON:  Thanks for answering that.  I didn't mean to put you on the spot.

MR. CANON:  It's no problem at all.

MR. HOUGHTON:  Thank you.

MR. WILLIAMSON:  It's a difficult thing, and it's a thing that's best spoken of, I think, from the state level and not in a demanding way but in a this-is-what-we-think way, and over time the county judge will decide if he agrees or not, and over time the mayor will decide if he agrees or not.

MR. CANON:  Absolutely.

MR. WILLIAMSON:  I mean, some things we think we ought to say to the local and regional leaders this is what you should do, some things we say this is what we think you should do.

MR. CANON:  Yes, sir.  And I have a policy board tonight and I know that that will come up again at my board meeting, as well as the Cameron County policy board meetings that are held here.  My board is very concerned about congestion and the movement of people and goods throughout the county and throughout the Lower Rio Grande Valley, as well as we realize that our borders don't stop at the river.  These communities that are south of the river are just as impacted and important to us as they would be if it was any community on the north side of the river.

MR. WILLIAMSON:  Thank you very much.  Hope?

MS. ANDRADE:  I'd just like to say one thing.  I just need to congratulate you on recognizing the need to work together.  I mean, it's just fantastic that you're all able to do that.  So congratulations and thank you for doing that.  It makes our job a lot easier too.

MR. CANON:  I appreciate that.

MR. WILLIAMSON:  I didn't get to serve with Mr. Escobar but I did get to serve with Mr. Solis ‑‑ in fact, we sat right next to each other.  He also sent a letter.

"I'm writing to express my appreciation for your being in Brownsville today.  As you have seen from the tours you've taken, we have many improvements in this area that are necessary, and our organization known as the Cameron County Regional Mobility Authority is very important.  I fully endorse their program and endorse the item on the agenda.

"Call me if I can answer any questions."

Jim is a nice guy.  Go ahead.

MR. JORGE:  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I think Mr. Canon responded very eloquently on that question.  It's a difficult issue to be addressed and it's one that we've already been discussing with several of our local leaders, and you're right, Mr. Chairman, that's something that I think as a region we'll have to make that decision.

MR. WILLIAMSON:  But we would never want a county judge or a mayor or a city council person or a commissioner to think that we were telling them what ‑‑ we will never tell you about that kind of stuff what you should do, you've got to make that decision yourself.  We just happen to believe that local execution and planning is better.

It's been effective in North Texas for a number of years, although we're admittedly going through a little bit of a rough patch right now over a toll road.  But generally speaking, it's permitted North Texas to speak with one voice, and frankly, I think that had a lot to do with our decision to allocate money and not projects which I think has been a tremendous help to everybody.

But to the extent that the judge and the commissioners court and the leaders of the community can figure out how to speak regionally and plan regionally, we think that's a good idea.

Where else are we going, Mario?

MR. JORGE:  The next speaker I'd like to introduce is Ms. Norma Zamora.  She's our director of the Brownsville Urban System, and she's going to talk about the regional transit service plan that I know Commissioner Andrade has been very forward in asking us throughout the state to implement a regional plan, and Ms. Zamora will speak to that.  So Norma?

MR. WILLIAMSON:  Welcome.

MS. ZAMORA:  Good morning.  Again, my name is Norma Zamora.  I'm the director of the City of Brownsville's transit department, the Brownsville Urban System.  It is my pleasure to again welcome each of the commission members and all of the TxDOT employees from Austin, Pharr and other parts of the state of Texas to Brownsville.

It is my pleasure to talk to you today about public transportation and I want to take this opportunity to thank each commission member for all that you do to support public transportation in South Texas.  I also want to extend a special thanks to Commissioner Andrade for heading the statewide effort to procure the requirements of House Bill 3588.

My presentation will provide an overview of our federal- and state-funded transit systems, and more importantly, to provide you with a status report on the progress of our region's response to House Bill 3588 as it relates to public transportation.

For the purposes of the regional transportation planning effort, the Statewide Study Group opted to define the service area boundaries as the COG boundaries which in our area consists of Cameron, Hidalgo and Willacy counties.  Although the 2005 population estimate in the three-county region is over a million, a substantial portion of the users of our public transportation systems, especially in the urban systems, are from Mexico.  For example, in Brownsville approximately 40 percent of the passengers that board at the downtown terminal walk across from Mexico to shop, work, visit medical facilities, go to school, and for recreation.

According to the Sustainable Civic Initiative, Matamoros, Mexico, across the bridge from Brownsville, has an estimated population of 150,000.  The city of Reynosa, Mexico, across the border from McAllen, has an estimated population of 750,000.  As there are several communities between Brownsville and McAllen, there are also several small communities between Matamoros and Reynosa.  These cities are immediately adjacent to the planning region and have a tremendous impact on the transit systems that operate in our three-county region.  This effectively increases the daily population to our region, however, they are not counted in the state or federal funding formulas.

We support any effort that may be taken by this commission to distribute transit funding to border areas to help mitigate for the added burden placed on communities along the Texas-Mexico border.

The management structure for the regional transit service plan includes the Pharr District Transit Advisory Panel, who will provide direction and oversight throughout the planning process.  The local COG was selected to be the lead agency.  The management and oversight of our regional planning process reflect the leadership role by the lead agency in close counsel with the members of the Transit Advisory Panel.  The COG will serve as the lead agency and will provide leadership, management and administrative support for the overall processes.  We will also have a subcommittee responsible for overseeing the outreach efforts and a technical subcommittee which will be overseeing the work done by the consultant.

The cost of the regional plan is $165,261.  TxDOT's participation is $100,000, Hidalgo County MPO is $60,000, and Brownsville Urban System is paying the difference.  The COG is also providing 40 percent in in-kind services.

All of the federal- and state-funded public and private transportation providers are participating in the regional planning process.  They include four 5307 small urban transit systems which include Brownsville Urban System, Harlingen Express, Rio Metro, and McAllen Express.  Combined they provided over 2 million trips in fiscal year 2005.

We also have two Section 5311 rural transit providers, Rio Transit and The Wave.  They together provided over 220,000 trips.

There are four Section 5310 elderly and disabled transit providers, Amigos Rio Grande State Center, the City of Port Isabel, and the Southwest Key Program which provided a combined total of 58,240 trips.

We have one Section 5311(f) inner-city bus provider, Valley Transit Company in Harlingen, a subsidiary of Greyhound Bus Line and the medical transportation program, a client-based public transportation service provided by LeFleur, who transported 537,244 passengers in 2005.

In fiscal year 2005, our transit operators provided over 2.3 million passenger trips in our region, and at this time I would like to acknowledge all the transportation providers and ask them to stand that are in the audience with us.

MR. WILLIAMSON:  Thank you.

MS. ANDRADE:  Thank you.

MS. ZAMORA:  Thank you.

And as you can tell from the map, the location of each transit system is going to help us close any service gaps identified in the planning process.  Of course, there are other client-based providers in our regions, such as the Texas Workforce Commission, the State Department of Health, the Department of Aging and Disabled Services, the Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation, and others who are also taking part in our regional transportation planning process.

As for the status of the regional coordination planning efforts, the Lower Rio Grande Development Council was selected as the lead agency in September of 2005.  We will continue to use the Transit Advisory Panel, which has been in existence since 2001, to monitor and oversee the planning process.  Representatives of the Transit Advisory Panel include the three MPOs, the public transit providers, the health and human service agencies, Workforce, MHMR, the disabled, the medical transportation providers, and the private bus carriers.

The stakeholders in this group continue to expand.  Aside from the participation of our Transit Advisory Panel members, we also have the benefit of guidance on this planning process by having the Pharr District PTC as a member of Commissioner Andrade's Statewide Study Group.

In October 2005, the City of Brownsville and Brownsville Urban System hosted a regional transit summit to promote the region's effort to develop regional transit coordination and identified barriers and constraints which hinder coordination.  In November of 2005, the TxDOT district office enlisted Texas Transit Institute and the services of Ms. Linda Sharrington to assist in the development of the RFP and set up the management structure for our regional plan.  She has been an invaluable asset to the progress of our plan.

In January of this year, we released a request for proposals.  In February and March we received and evaluated the proposal that was submitted, we interviewed the consultant and negotiated the contract.  And I'm happy to report that the contract was awarded to KFH Group, Inc., and we had our kickoff meeting yesterday in the Pharr District office.  This project is scheduled to be completed in December of 2006.

Thank you for your attention, and this concludes my presentation.

MR. WILLIAMSON:  Questions, members?

MS. ANDRADE:  Norma, I just want to thank you for what you're doing in developing this plan, and also thank your partners, Health and Human Services, your local COG, the Workforce Commission and the many providers, and I urge you to keep working together.  So thank you so much.

MS. ZAMORA:  Thank you.

(Applause.)

MR. JORGE:  Thank you, Norma.  And I'm going to wrap up with some slides.

As you know, we have two RMAs in our district, one that's been in operation now for over a year, and one that's newly formed which is Hidalgo County.  I want to just mention both chairmen.  I think they're here and they're going to be speaking later in the program.

Mr. David Allex is the chairman for Cameron County RMA. David, please stand.  Thank you.

And Dennis Burleson is the chairman for the Hidalgo County RMA.  Dennis, if you'll also stand.  Thank you, sir.

Both of these individuals were appointed by Governor Perry to lead the respective RMAs, and it's been a pleasure working with both of them, and I look forward to many, many successful projects in this region.

What I wanted to show here is again some of the major RMA projects that we're going to be looking at in the future, and I think Andrew Canon mentioned a shortfall from the Texas Mobility Plan and the Texas Urban Mobility Plan.

One of the shortfalls, as you see here, is this Hidalgo County Loop.  This is a little over 100-mile loop that as we stand today we have no means to fund over the next 25 years.  And as a transportation engineer here in the Valley, if I'm sitting here 25 years from now and we haven't moved on this loop, I think we'll really be shortchanging the future of this region.  So this is an extremely important endeavor that needs to take place, and the RMA, I think, will be the vehicle that will get us there.

We are doing some work also a portion of this loop, an extension of Military Highway as a parallel road to 83 and 77 to hit Brownsville, and extension of arterials, expressway type arterials on the north end to loop around Harlingen.  Those are very important key elements.  We're doing a lot of work on some of these, preliminary work, and I wanted to show that.

We have a relief route which is probably going to be the first RMA project in Hidalgo County, planned as a toll road, tolled relief route around the city of La Joya and Penitas.  And that project, we're finalizing the environmental documents and we've had about three or four public meetings that have gone very well.  That project is going to be first in line, I believe.

We're going to be looking at the southwest segment of the Hidalgo County Loop, doing some preliminary engineering and environmental documents in a very short time so that we can start facilitating that project.  Again, financially funding these projects is going to be an effort that's going to take, I think, the RMA, us and a lot of the local entities.

The expansion of Military Highway from the Pharr International Bridge all the way into Brownsville is one that we're currently undertaking in terms of the environmental and preliminary engineering.  We've had two public meetings that went very well, and we should be conducting another one this summer and finalizing the environmental documents this year.

The southeast segment of the loop is a segment that Hidalgo County will be performing the preliminary engineering on, with our oversight, also in the next few months, and that's another major leg of the loop.

We're also looking at this connection from 281 to 77 on the north side of Hidalgo and Cameron County as an expressway facility with allotment for future dedicated truck lanes.  Again, a lot of these will provide connectivity to any interstate corridor coming to the Valley.

The City of Harlingen is assisting us, with Cameron County RMA, in looking at the extension of that same corridor east and then south to hit FM 509 which leads directly into the Los Indios Bridge, and so that's an effort that they're undertaking, in conjunction with the rail relocation project that they're doing, again in looking at preliminary engineering and environmental documents.

In the Brownsville area, a couple of projects that I want to mention here that the RMA is going to be performing, and we'll hear more about these later.   The West Rail which is essentially tied into the rail relocation is already done and goes west and then south to the new international bridge on the west side of Brownsville; FM 511 which I mentioned earlier as a future controlled access facility into the port and east side of Brownsville; the East Loop which I also mentioned earlier as a relief route to the east side of Brownsville; and the West Loop which is also on the agenda today which involves the obtainment of the abandoned railroad right of way once the West Rail project is in place and development of a toll road corridor from 77/83 into the B&M Bridge.

This slide here just shows a picture of our potential interstate corridors.  Everything you see there is already completed.  It is roughly over 111 miles of highways that are to interstate standards.  Everything that is in blue is still pending, and the last numbers I have in terms of mileage are about 60 miles on 281, about 50 miles on 77 that are still missing.

We do have a project in Falfurrias on the UTP that is funded for the next three years, and one in Raymondville for this year.

This slide right here shows the major connectors on the northern Mexico side and these are the major toll roads and major highways that lead directly to the Valley, and you can see how this provides very good connectivity to the major cities in Mexico and some of the ports on the Pacific Ocean, as mentioned earlier.

MR. JOHNSON:  Mario?

MR. JORGE:  Yes, sir.

MR. JOHNSON:  On the previous slide, help me with the differentiation in the colors.  What are they significant of, the yellow, blue, red and green?

MR. JORGE:  Commissioner, they're just identified as different corridors.  I don't think they have any specific meaning other than just different corridors.  This is the existing toll road from Monterrey to Reynosa; this green here is a connection that's been recently from Ciudad Victoria south to San Luis Potosi.  So I don't know that they necessarily have any meaning other than they just identify different corridors.

MR. JOHNSON:  Thank you.

MR. JORGE:  Yes, sir.

I think this slide you have seen before, but it's important to show because it identifies economic activity within the I-69 corridor, and you can see the shaded area in Mexico how 79 percent of the economic activity takes place within this shaded area which is in direct line of the corridor.  About 80 percent of the economic activity happens within the shaded area of the United States which again has good connectivity with I-69, and a similar percentage in Canada as the corridor arrives in the eastern part.  So these are very significant numbers, and again, those are nothing new that you haven't seen.

That really pretty much concludes my presentation.  I want to thank the commission once again for being here in Brownsville and the Pharr District, and hopefully this presentation was informational to you.  I think the theme of this presentation which we tried to put out today is the same theme which we conduct our everyday business, and that is to enhance our transportation system through partnership.

We have many financial challenges facing us.  I think the tools that have been provided to us by the legislature and the governor, and those that we can come up with and develop locally, I think will assist us in meeting some of those challenges.

Once again, I thank you for your attention, and any questions you have, I'd be glad to answer.

MR. JOHNSON:  Any questions of Mario?

MR. HOUGHTON:  I just thank you, Mario, for your tremendous hospitality, you and the members of the TxDOT family here in South Texas ‑‑ excuse me ‑‑ the Rio Grande Valley.

MR. JORGE:  We're glad to have you, and even though my staff probably will kill me, we'd have you back any time you want.  It's been a lot of work but it's been very enjoyable.

(General laughter.)

MR. JOHNSON:  It's been a very comprehensive and enlightening presentation.  We're grateful for that.

We've had one card submitted, Charlie Leal, who is district aide for Senator Lucio.  Did you want to say anything?  The chairman has read into the record Senator Lucio's letter.  Mr. Leal?

MR. LEAL:  I think that's fine, sir.

MR. JOHNSON:  All right.  Thank you for being here, and we miss the senator but we were grateful to be able to share some time with him yesterday.

Well, I was going to say that the chair was not present, and in view of that, I was uncertain as to what he wanted to do, go to the next item on the agenda or recess, but I'm going to yield back.

MR. WILLIAMSON:  Thank you.  I think it will be appropriate, Mike, at this time to ask Mr. Saenz to give us an overview of potentially extending ‑‑ well, how we're going to build an interstate highway in the Lower Rio Grande Valley and the implications for potentially I-37.

MR. SAENZ:  Thank you.  Good morning, commissioners, Mr. Behrens.  For the record, Amadeo Saenz, assistant executive director for Engineering Operations.

The item is a report to give you a status as to where we're at as we look at developing an interstate-quality facility from 37 south to the Rio Grande Valley.  Of course, this request came in a letter from Governor Perry to the Transportation Commission, and of course, we've started working on it, and there are basically two concurrent methods or ways that we think we can get this project developed.

The first thing that we're looking at, of course, we have been working and developing the TTC-69 Corridor, and to that end, we have been working on the environmental assessment, we're working on an environmental streamlined project and using a two-tier approach, and of course, Tier 1 of the environmental project  we hope to complete by late 2007, at which time then we can have individual project studies done on the projects for the corridor in the Tier 2.

We expect to have full environmental clearance for the whole corridor TTC-69 by 2010, but that might be a little bit optimistic.  You know, as we move on, these are major challenges.

Concurrently with the tiered approach, and also at the request of Governor Perry, we have moved forward and put in place a request for qualifications to bring onboard a strategic partner very similar to what we have on the 35-TTC with the Cintra-Zachry team.  This strategic partner is going to be the group that will help us identify the funding sources and identify the projects that can be developed and in what form, shape, schedule priority, and look for ways to use the tools that we have available to us to develop these projects.

That procurement is out.  We had a kind of kickoff meeting with the potential developers earlier this week, and we hope that in the next couple of months we will have a developer partner onboard to help us put together a project list, a master plan for the TTC, as well as a financial plan on how these projects can be developed.

We think that we can have a developer onboard and have a master plan in place and financial plan in place by late 2007, and the project would be developed very similar to what we're doing on 35-TTC, two concurrent processes going on.

The second option that we want to look at is the possibility of just taking and looking at the idea of just doing what the letter said, take one of the existing corridors and develop it to an interstate-quality facility, connecting 37 down to the Rio Grande Valley.  This would allow us to comply with the federal requirements that for a highway to be considered interstate, it has to:  one, meet the interstate quality standards, and two, it needs to connect to an existing interstate.

Of course, under that option we really have two corridors that connect to 37 that come down to the Rio Grande Valley, one being US 77 and one being US 281.  So under that process, what we're looking at is, of course, we will do separate environmental studies for each of the corridors or do one feasibility study to determine which one would be the one to move forward with, or a combination of both.  And then from that we would determine mechanisms to come up with funding, and that's always going to be the question.

We could then, if we move forward on the southern leg of the 37 connection ‑‑ that's what I'll call it for today ‑‑ the 37 connection, as the TTC-69 project continues to evolve and the developer partner identifies financial mechanisms and funding plans, we could then basically meld both projects.

So what we looked at so far is I've asked the districts to put together estimates of what the development of these projects would cost.  For example, our construction estimate for US 77 from 37 just north of Robstown down to Brownsville, to make it an interstate-quality facility would cost us about $640 million in today's dollars.  Of course, environmental clearance has been done to some extent, but it could be done either way.

On 281 the project is a little bit longer and our estimate is somewhere about $840- to $850 million to be able to upgrade US 281 to an interstate-quality facility and connect it from around the Three Rivers/George West area down US 281 to the Pharr area.

So now we've started and we're also looking at some potential funding options.  How would we find some funds to be able to construct it?  Well, one thing we can look at under legislation that we have is build truck lanes or separate truck lanes, and of course, if a corridor is designated as part of the Trans-Texas Corridor, we have the opportunity to not only build these truck lanes but these truck lanes can carry heavier loads and also allow trucks to be configured in doubles and triples as well as to go faster.

Then we could build those, and as you build those, basically the money that you would generate from building those projects, after you pay for that initial construction, could then be used to upgrade the existing facility.

MR. WILLIAMSON:  Hold on a second, Amadeo.  Let's assume that became one of the financing options that would permit us to do the improvements to get to the interstate standard.  I take it, because the rest of our transportation grid is not yet prepared to accept overweights or doubles and triples, that we would in effect be marketing a Brownsville to Corpus Christi, or maybe to think globally, a Monterrey to Brownsville to Corpus Christi industrial corridor that would be uniquely suited.

MR. SAENZ:  Yes, sir.

MR. WILLIAMSON:  Because someplace in the Corpus Christi area the trucks would have to shift loads or shift trailers or get to a container.

MR. SAENZ:  That's exactly right, and that's one of the things that we were looking is wherever you end the overweight corridor, you've got to have some kind of an intermodal facility that you can either shift to alternate modes or basically break down the load so that then the load goes, or you stop at a potential destination where these loads want to go.

By considering only the 77 or the one down to the Rio Grande Valley, you do create this one unique corridor.  I think through competition you would probably get additional corridors that could be funded the same way, say from the Laredo area to Corpus Christi could be a potential additional corridor.  Being them all being part of the transportation system, this could become financial tools or funding sources to be able to develop more projects of this type throughout the state.

MR. WILLIAMSON:  And sort of leap-frogging ahead, because the tendency is always to think about well, if you do this is it detrimental to the Port of Brownsville, if you do that is it detrimental to the Port of Corpus Christi, if you do the other is it detrimental to the Port of Laredo.  We are aware of changes soon to occur in the Panama Canal and our whole basis for the economic opportunity component of our Strategic Plan, with regard to this area, is our firm belief that the ports on the West Coast will collapse under their own weight in the next few years, and the question is going to be who will take advantage of that commerce.  Will it be the Republic of Mexico, and if so, will it be a land bridge; will it be the Republic of Panama, and if so, will it be a deeper canal?

But in any event, when those ports collapse, with certainty it doesn't matter how fast the Port of Brownsville and the Port of Corpus Christi and the Port of Houston and the Port of Victoria grow, there will still be more business than everybody can handle.

MR. SAENZ:  That's correct.  I think what was announced by the Panama Canal and the expansions will basically only provide additional flexibility and opportunity for cargo that was coming into the West Coast and now to have basically more options:  you can come and use the Mexican ports and have this land crossing or this land connection, or they come across at the Panama Canal and then come into the United States on the East Coast.   And the ports that we have on the Gulf Coast in Brownsville and Corpus and Houston, Beaumont-Port Arthur are going to be very important as now they will be receivers of cargo that would come in.  And the trade corridors, in essence, change from east to west to more north to south.

MR. WILLIAMSON:  So it will be important for us, as we deliberate and find solutions to bring the interstate to the Lower Rio Grande Valley, to emphasize to our partners in Corpus Christi and Houston, particularly, there will be plenty of business for all of us, there will be no business for any of us if we don't plan together and act together.

MR. SAENZ:  We need to move forward and plan to try to get ahead of the game, you might say.

MR. WILLIAMSON:  Please continue.

MR. SAENZ:  Another alternative is, of course, by designating the connection down to the Rio Grande Valley as the Trans-Texas Corridor is we have the opportunity to use the utility elements of Trans-Texas Corridor as a potential funding source to be able to, one, provide the service of bringing additional utilities down.  And one time there's been talk about a desalinization plant that was being built in Corpus, this desalinization plant could then provide water down to the Rio Grande Valley.  There could be a need to provide electric services, major transmission lines down to the Rio Grande Valley as fast as it's growing.  So having a utility corridor and bringing in partners will allow us to hopefully float some additional money that we can use to also build and expand on the highway transportation elements of that.

MR. WILLIAMSON:  So in theory, if we could find a water district that wanted to pay us for the right to lay water line, if we could find a utility company that would be willing to pay a toll that would use lines we would erect, we would use that cash plus the contribution of the partners from Harlingen and Brownsville and the whole area, plus state and federal funds, and maybe collectively that will be enough to finance the project.

MR. SAENZ:  Yes, sir.  And I guess we heard this morning ‑‑ that was going to be my next ‑‑ the next possible funding source we heard from our partners in Harlingen, and I think the district has been working closely also with Cameron County and we'll be working with other partners on the corridor to see what we can do to bring in some additional money that we can leverage.

And of course, the whole key on a particular corridor if you don't have enough money, the private developer can only bring so much, we've got to somehow bring in some additional funding sources in the form of toll equity so we can make the project a reality.  And that's really what it's going to take, it's going to take a combination of a lot of funding sources and strategies to be able to take this facility and bring it down, upgrade it to interstate quality, put in the truck toll lanes, use the utilities, and with those monies then we can basically have it in place.

And of course, we also have the other tools that we have available to us through pass-through financing.  Of course, there is for locals some assistance through the State Infrastructure Bank.  If they don't have the money, they could come back and borrow part of that money to utilize for some of the cost of this project.  And of course, looking at the Mobility Fund, there may be some additional funding through the Mobility Fund that we can do.

My plan is to keep working on these strategies, identify potential funding sources, and piece together a financial plan of how we can expand and build this type of facility.

MR. WILLIAMSON:  Amadeo, one of the things that we constantly run into across the state on these big corridors is the absence of intimate knowledge about how the environmental process works, and invariably when we, for example, advanced the Corridor 35 project, we were all surprised by the number of local officials who weren't intimately familiar with the environmental process.

For the sake of the audience that's here today, let me take you through a series of questions and answers.  With regard to Interstate 69 or TTC-69, there's a lot of pressure to select either 77 or 281.  Is it likely, based on the way the system works, that those two existing footprints would be more favorably received by the federal government than an alternative footprint?  I'm not asking you to comment on what will happen, I'm asking you to comment on is it likely.

MR. SAENZ:  It is likely.  You try to minimize the impact so if you're trying to expand on something that already exists and you're taking much less than having a build a brand new one, most definitely it's easier to go along an existing corridor or parallel to an existing corridor or adjacent to it.

MR. WILLIAMSON:  That's the interstate model.  Now, when you're speaking of building the Trans-Texas Corridor model, a whole new multimodal concept, is the same true or is it likely that it will be someplace else?

MR. SAENZ:  It will pretty much be the same thing.  You will look at how much capacity you have available on the existing system that you have, and if you have capacity available to you.  For example, I'll talk about the draft EIS that was just posted for the 35-TTC, and if you look at south of San Antonio that the route goes to Laredo and it follows or it looks at expanding the existing 35 footprint because we have a lot of capacity built into that.

So even under the Trans-Texas Corridor, you do have the possibility of if you have capacity that you take advantage of that capacity first before you go out there and build a brand new one.

Now, there are some circumstances that are out there with respect to environmental and historical requirements, and you have to look at all options, and that's why we have to be able to look at every option available and then, in essence, following the guideline and the regulation, we will go out there and evaluate each one, determine what are the pluses and minuses, the benefits and the drawbacks, and then come back with the best solution.

MR. WILLIAMSON:  So it's not a matter of this commission or your staff deciding we want to build this road right here, it's a matter of us complying with federal law and answering a series of questions and the answers to those questions determine where the route goes.

MR. SAENZ:  That's correct.

MR. WILLIAMSON:  It's entirely possible that the route for TTC-69 would be pushed off to the west, is it not?

MR. SAENZ:  It could be, but I think the law now has been changed and there's some flexibility that allows us to look at impacts along existing corridors, and they deal with the environment on the historical side and also on the other side of environmental that allows us to be able to go out there and if you have to take some, say,